


Sewing Lesson

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam gets a lesson in first aid. Pre-series genfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sewing Lesson

There were a few years between Sam’s first kiss and his second growth spurt that Dean was old enough to hunt and Sam was not. His memories of those years are tinged with the giddiness of freedom and the fury at being left behind. He’d always bounced between the two extremes, never sure if wanted to be shooting rock salt at ghosts with his family or if being left to his own devices was the best gift his father and brother could have given him.  
  
Sam did his homework during those years. Dad and Dean would leave when the sun started to set, and Sam would sit in whatever temporary shelter they were inhabiting and work his way through his subjects with single-minded focus. Schoolwork was bloodless and clean and respectable, and Sam clung to how  _good_  he was at it. He excelled at school like Dean excelled with a rifle, and he did his homework to hear his teachers praise him for it the way his father never would.  
  
He was halfway through his geometry homework when Dean and his father busted in from the sticky spring night, Dean pressing a handful of bloody t-shirt against his side.  
  
Sam had seen enough injuries by that point in his life. He knew serious from not, and this was not. Besides, Dean was swearing up a storm, not all gray-faced and quiet, and Sam knew that was a good sign.  
  
“Shit,” Dean howled. “Cocksucking sonofabith! Stupid fucker.”  
  
“What happened?” Sam asked.  
  
“Ghoul,” his father said shortly. “Got him with a knife.”  
  
Dad eased him on to the threadbare motel sheets and helped him lie flat. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine, let me see.”  
  
Dad cut Dean’s shirt away, and there was a six-inch gash running vertically from the bottom of his ribcage down to the jut of his hip bone. Sam sat motionless at the side table, waiting numbly for an order.  
  
Dad touched the edge of the wound gingerly, prodding in a way that made Dean hiss.  
  
“It needs to be stitched,” he said finally. “Sam.”  
  
Sam got the suturing supplies from the first aid kit as their dad spread a coarse towel under Dean’s side to catch the worst of the blood. Sam threaded the needle, heart pounding in spite of himself. Dean was clearly fine, but the choked pain in his voice made Sam’s shoulders tense until they ached.  
  
“Sam,” his father said. “C’mere. It’s time you learned this.”  
  
Dean looked up at their father, wide-eyed. “Dad,” he protested.  
  
“He has to learn some time,” Dad said. He beckoned Sam over to the bedside and slid one of the plastic table chairs perpendicular to Dean’s prone form. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll walk you through it.”  
  
 _I don’t want to_ , Sam wanted to scream. But Dean was looking at him warily and their father’s expression was hinged somewhere between worry and impatience, and if Sam didn’t want a blistering scolding he was going to have to suck it up.  
  
He sat reluctantly, needle grasped awkwardly in his fingers.  
  
“You have to sterilize it,” his father said. Sam had done this part before, and he took his time wiping the needle with cotton and rubbing alcohol. Dad spread the rest of the supplies out on the foot of the bed, lined up in the order Sam would need them. The forceps were there in case Sam lost the needle in Dean, or got the thread caught. He fought back a wave of bile.  
  
“Okay,” he said, swallowing.  
  
Dean was shaking his head slightly. “If you maim me, I’ll kill you,” he muttered.  
  
“Shut up,” Sam snapped. He was unsteady with nerves. His father’s hand landed on the back of his neck, big and reassuring.  
  
“Okay,” Dad said. He poured a third of the alcohol over Dean’s side, and Dean tipped his head back and groaned. The open wound frothed a little, cleaning itself. Sam started shaking worse, and his dad squeezed his neck. “He’s fine,” he said. “He needs this to heal – you can do this for your brother, right Sam?”  
  
He wiped down the area so that Sam could see the sharp edges, sliced apart. He felt the bile rise in his throat again, then forced it back down. Dad and Dean did this for each other all the time – if they survived it, then so could Sam.  
  
“All right,” his father said, right by his ear. “Close as possible on either side of the wound. The needle has to go down far enough so the stitches won’t rip out when he moves.”  
  
Sam looked dumbly at the gash for a second, trying to figure out where to start. He lifted the needle, then laid it close to the bloody edge of skin. Dean was watching him, not quite trusting but not afraid either. If their situations were reversed, Dean would do it in a heartbeat, and do it right.  
  
Sam took a deep breath, turned the point of the needle downward, and began to push. He was afraid Dean would scream or thrash, but Dean held very, very still. Sam could see his bare stomach rising and falling in short breaths. He focused on the needle.  
  
It took more pressure than Sam thought it would to pierce Dean’s skin. He was sure he was going to hit some vital nerve, or push too far and pierce bone. He pushed down gingerly, stopping as the point cut through in a little jerk. Dean’s stomach clenched. The needle was halfway swallowed up by skin, and fresh blood sprang around Sam’s fingers.  
  
“Good. Now cut across in a straight line. Close as possible.”  
  
It bled a little when he pulled the thread through, but the worst part was coming up the other side. His fingers slipped under Dean’s skin the slightest bit when he had to force the needle back up, and he inhaled sharply. His nails brushed hidden, pink skin and came away bloody. “Sorry,” he said, choked.  
  
He pulled the thread tight, and then the first stitch was done.  
  
He glanced up, and Dad was looking at him with something close to approval in his eyes. “Good boy,” he said, lips lifting slightly. Sam hoped that would be enough to get him off the hook for the rest of the job, but he had no such luck.  
  
Dad directed his attention back down to the stitch. “Now, diagonal and down, no more than a quarter inch.”  
  
Sam started to push the needle down again, but his father stilled his wrist. “Wait,” he said. “See the gap in the skin?” Sam did see. The thread was pulled a little too tight, causing the two edges of the wound to ripple against each other unevenly. “The edges have to line up,” Dad said, “or it won’t heal right.”  
  
Sam changed the angle of the stitch, teeth clenched together in concentration. He experimented until he got it right, until the skin lined up neatly and he could add a second stitch without disrupting it. He realized that every extra second he took was an increased chance of infection for Dean. If it got infected, they’d have to go to the hospital, and that meant an entirely different category of danger: fake names, fake credit cards, false stories of hunting accidents, and long-expired insurance cards.  
  
Sam’s focus narrowed to his task. Dean was thankfully docile under his fingers, and after a few more stitches a calming sense of detachment settled over him.  _It could be anyone’s skin_ , he told himself. Not Dean’s, not anyone he knew, just…flesh. Down, across, up, pull. Repeat. Dad’s hand didn’t leave the back of his neck, and Sam knew with thirteen years’ worth of instinct that his father would stop him if he were about to do something really wrong.  
  
Dean’s breathing evened out after a while, and Sam figured he had settled into that tired, post-injury numbness. Sam’s fingers went bloodless from gripping the needle so tightly, and he had to stop halfway through to shake feeling back into his hands. Dean was looking at him, eyes half-lidded and very green, and Sam raised his eyebrows in question.  
  
“I’m good,” he said. “Keep going.”  
  
Sam attacked the second half with surer fingers. He finished in fifteen minutes, holding his hand out for the scissors when he was done without even thinking. His father slid them into his hands, and then he cut and tied off the thread with the knot his father had drilled into him his whole life.  
  
“Holy shit,” Dean said, craning his neck to check out his own stitches. He looked up and grinned. “Not bad.”  
  
The line of stitches was a little crooked at the top, but mostly neat and straight. Sam had always been a quick study; it would heal cleanly. There was still some blood seeping from it, but Dean took care of it himself, dragging an alcohol wipe over the surrounding skin.  
  
“Not bad at all,” Dad said proudly, and Sam tried to smile even though he mostly wanted to throw up. He looked listlessly over at the table. His geometry book lay open and neglected. He was going to have to finish his homework in Spanish tomorrow.  
  
He put away the suturing supplies as Dad padded and bandaged the wound, wrapping medical tape around Dean’s ribs and stomach. Dean had started to look like a grown-up in the last year. He’d grown into his leanness so that he reminded Sam less of a skinny colt and more of some dangerous cat. In that instant, though, he looked young and way too small for Sam’s liking.  
  
Sam washed his hands in the bathroom sink, scrubbing at the crusting blood. It was stuck up under his fingernails and wouldn’t wash away no matter how he picked at it.  
  
“…sloppy,” he heard his father say as he emerged from the bathroom.  
  
“I know,” he heard Dean say. Dean was looking down, and there was tension around his mouth.  
  
“You could have gotten yourself killed,” Dad said. “Or me. Tomorrow we’re gonna go back to that old barnhouse we passed and train for a while.”  
  
“What about school?” Sam said before he could stop himself.  
  
His father didn’t even turn his head. “You’ll go to school,” he said. “Dean will stay with me.”  
  
“But he’s already missed three days this month,” Sam said loudly, and Dean turned to Sam with a wide-eyed look that clearly broadcast  _shut up already_. Sam wasn’t sure why he was fighting. Dean hated school anyway, and Sam was just as happy to eat in the cafeteria without Dean watching him like a hawk for once. But it seemed wrong. He’d just patched Dean up with his own hands – didn’t he get some say?  
  
“School is school,” Dad said. “But your brother has a job to see to.”  
  
“But – “  
  
“This discussion is closed,” Dad said, and Sam shut up. “Now, we all need some sleep.”  
  
It was almost midnight, Sam saw. He’d be dragging tomorrow.  
  
“Sam, you’re with me tonight,” Dad said.  
  
Whenever they shared a motel room, Dad took the bed closest to the door, and Dean and Sam shared the other. Injured parties got a bed to themselves, though, so tonight Dean would get to stretch out while Sam would be even more cramped than usual.  
  
Dean washed down three painkillers with tap water, then collapsed back against the pillow with a dramatic sigh. “Night,” he mumbled.  
  
Sam climbed into the other bed, scooting as close to the edge as possible. The bed creaked loudly under Dad’s weight as he settled on the other side. Sam set the radio alarm for 6:00AM, then clicked off the light. He curled on his side, facing Dean, and in the darkness he could see the snow-white bandages, soft and protective.  
  
He was running through tomorrow’s checklist: get up, shower, breakfast, first period Spanish and math homework, second period English, third period geometry, lunch without Dean, fourth period gym….  
  
He stopped, then backtracked. Check Dean’s stitches. He added that to his morning tasks. He’d put them there, and they were his to take care of now.  
  
Long after Dean relaxed into sleep and Dad started snoring, Sam was awake, reliving the dangerous feel of a needle pulling through skin.


End file.
